Andrej Kiska (source: Sme)
President Andrej Kiska might found or join a political party after all.
He admitted so in an interview published on May 17 on the Aktuality.sk website which the murdered journalist Ján Kuciak worked for. Kiska admits that it was the murder of the journalist and his partner, Martina Kušnírová, that made him reconsider.
"Only a stupid person does not change his opinions when circumstances change," Kiska told Aktuality.sk. "The murder of your colleague and his fiancée changed my original intentions."
Kiska announced earlier this week that he was not planning to run for re-election in the presidential elections in the spring of 2019 but at the same time stressed that he was not leaving politics and that he wants to contribute in some way to the change in the ruling style that the country needs. One year ago, in April 2017, Kiska said he was not planning to found or join a party and run in parliamentary elections. Now he says the recent events have changed his plans.
The presidential spokesperson, Roman Krpelan, told the Sme daily that the decision to remain present in politics in some way was one that Kiska made recently and on his own.
"We have several alternatives on the table dealing with how to handle the trust [that Kiska enjoys among people]," Krpelan told Sme. "There are not that many of them and only a few people in the president's environment know about them."
When asked whether one of the alternatives was that Kiska would found his own political party, Krpelan said that "fighting for a better Slovakia is not something you can do through the media and talking in interviews about the things that work and the things that don't work in our country."
Both the president and his spokesperson repeatedly asked the public for patience regarding what Kiska's future in Slovak politics would look like. Kiska announced in his May 15 statement that he would give more details to the public only after the municipal elections in the autumn of this year.
